Oktoberfest «

The Road to Oktoberfest, Day Five: “Longwood Guy”

October 2, 2009

(photo credit: youniversitytv.com)

That right there is Dan, the Longwood Man. Remember him from the campus home page? We do. It was a swell photo; they should put it back up. One afternoon, we found ourselves walking next to Dan on Brock Commons. ”Longwood Man!” we shrieked. Dan — a classy celebrity — was neither annoyed or frightened.

He graduated this past May, and was kind enough to answer some questions from The Longwood Hole about how fame changed his life and how he ended up at a school in Central VA.

The Longwood Hole: It’s sort of random and somehow fitting you became Longwood Man. How the hell did you end up in Farmville, anyway? Aren’t you from CT?

Dan: Yeah, I’m from a small town in CT, sorta like Farmville, in that it has nothing, but, it’s a New Yorker weekend town — so it’s much fancier. How I ended up in Farmville and at Longwood: I wanted to go to a small school in VA that had anthropology. I also looked at others bigger schools as well but I enjoyed the campus; it was prettier than most. But the one thing besides everyone talking about how Dr. Jordan was the man was that it had odds of about 3 girls to every guy. FUCK YEAH every guy’s dream. It really is like those college movies.. too bad it was shattered a bit when I found out that the damn Hampden-Sydney douches take them, with their lame-ass popped collars. But it’s all good — I still managed.

TLH: What’s it like living on the other side of the country, away from Farmville? Do you miss being Longwood Man?

Dan: Living on the other side is wonderful. A buffet of food selections in a two block radius. I live in one of the best neighborhoods, nice night life, and I’m only a fifteen minute walk from my main workplace. The weather is nice and sunny for the most part, kinda cool in the morning, gets nice and warm in the afternoon and by night when the fog rolls in gets a bit chilly but nothing compared to VA or CT chilliness. But I do have to say I miss being in Farmville, and being Longwood Man. Having people come up to me and saying “HEY! You’re on the homepage”. I recently came back to the area and walked on campus. I do miss walking on Brock Commons.

TLH: Could you describe your current job?

Dan: My job….. well I’m the manager of two restaurants that sell Belgian fries with over twenty dips to choose from, crepes both sweet and savory. We have a wide selection of Belgian beers on tap. I order all the food and beer, make sure things run smoothly. Meet with foods reps, beer reps, and wine tasting, a bunch. Like any job, I hate it sometimes cause I work all day, six days a week, even though we are open seven days. But I love it; it’s one of those chances that don’t come up that often and are life changing. I find it funny sometimes when I meet with people for benefits and fundraising dinners — they think I’ll be much older but no its just me this twenty-two-year-old helping run the show. It kicks ass.

TLH: In retrospect, is there anything you would have done differently at college?

Dan: Not really — maybe studied a bit more. But other than that I had a great college experience at Longwood. If I had done things differently, I might not have been Longwood Man, and I might not be where I am now. You can’t do anything to change the past, and the future won’t come as you expect it.

TLH: What’s the attraction to San Fransico? Socializing? I remember you once described partying there and waking up next to some old chick you didn’t know…?

Dan: I’ve always loved San Francsico. I’ve visited a bunch for vacations, gone for conferences. But the food is amazing; they got great food, not the shit we have in Farmville. Also the night life, and just the people — everyone is chill. I would have to say if I took a handful of San Franciscians and put them in Farmville they would be called freaks, but here eh it’s normal — everyone is unique and different and no one cares we all hang out smoke, drink, and enjoy life. And also we get fucked up and we go to work pushing through the day sometimes with massive hangovers, but hey, we had a nice night.

Yeah about that…. I was partying when I went to a conference. And I woke up with this thirty-year-old chick. Well I woke up and someone was next to me and I was like “oh hello?” in my head. And then I wasn’t at my hotel room, or my friend’s place and I was like hmmmm, got up and was like …. “yeah…. I gotta go…… I have a conference to go to” and I left. Whatever that’s life, and a good story.

TLH: Did it ever get old, people recognizing you as Longwood Man? What were the circumstances of that picture that ended up on the school’s website?

Dan: Nah it didn’t get old. It was fun. I was a celeb; who doesn’t want to be a celeb? I was living a mini-Entourage life. It was funny to sometimes. My English 400 teacher opened up the homepage to his Freshmen 150 class and he said that 75% of them were like I KNOW THAT GUY!… and the odd thing is I dunno how they know me, cause I’d get fucked up at the bar and not at Frat Parties senior year, unless I did go to frat parties and didn’t remember… which could be a possibility.

I’d say some circumstances of me bring on the site was people wanted me to do my GO LANCER power punch or they would do it with me, which was fun but kinda got boring. The only reason why I’m Longwood Man is because I was sitting with a friend by the [CHI] fountain and these people came up to me with a camera and said “so….. you gotta leave.” And I replied “what?! why? I like my fountain.” And they said well you can stay but you have to be in a commercial for Longwood, which you can see the whole footage on www.youniversity.tv — kinda lame but whatever, I got to be with my fountain. I like to call it a watering hole though, cause we all crowd ’round it like all the animals in the savannah do at their water holes.

TLH: Do you have any Real World Advice to impart to freshman?

Dan: Ah, real world advise… D-Hall blows, and their politics suck, and those students working don’t know shit; they are trying to tell me how to do things in a kitchen when I had more experience than them, and now I’m a manager or two in San Francisco… I mean come on. Don’t let them be dicks to you or push you around. Be the big dick, and don’t let the Aramark administration push you round either. You are the client… You are always right.

Other real word advise…. Do not fear mistakes cause there are none. And that life is the only real teacher. When you let go of all the preconceptions and useless knowledge and just live life as it is, you will do amazing things.

TLH: Considering the extent to which you dart around the country, do you have any notion of where you’d like to be in ten years?

Dan: Well I was planning on taking a month off soon, to go to have a little spiritual journey in India, but they are having problems with swine flu, so… I don’t wanna get stuck in India, granted I love the country and culture but being stuck will be no fun when I’m trying to get back, so I think I’ll go to Italy, visit Venice before it sinks. And also I was gonna have a weekend in the great Farmville to visit some cool Longwoodians. But ten years…. dunno that’s kinda far; I more look in the now, but if I have to look and think about it…. Maybe I’ll have my own restaurant somewhere. I’d love to have a little one eventually in Farmville that super kick ass, but that’s maybe when I’m an old man and have nothing better to do.

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The Road to Okoberfest, Day Four: Battle of the Bands and other Miscellanea

October 1, 2009

Mall Brawl: Officially, “Longwoodstock” will occur this Saturday. But if anything ever resembled the hastily organized 1969 gathering of freaks, it is Friday’s Battle of the Bands at the Lankford Mall, sponsored, as always, by the squirrelly freak-fest that is WMLU. They have a behemoth of a show lined up. From four to ten PM you’ll be able to hear thirteen bands, twice what Mortar Board is offering on Saturday. All the bands have at least one member affiliated with Longwood. Two bands will get cash prizes while the others, like most of the bands at ’69 Woodstock, will get nothing.

Here’s the schedule:

B.C.’s Pickup ———– 4:00pm

Arch Stanton ———– 4:30pm

Jackie Stem ———— 5:00pm

Big Fresh Meat ———– 5:30pm

Juice Mouse ————- 6:00pm

Sonic Skandal ———— 6:30pm

Go Indigo ————– 7:00pm

Thine Heart ————- 7:30pm

Hell City Sinners ——— 8:00pm

Dream Atlantic ——— 8:30pm

I Am the Kid ———— 9:00pm

Black Raptor Hoedown – 9:30pm

One Ambition ———– 10:00pm

Military Intellijanks: A Longwood Professor will soon be publishing a report that examines the U.S. military’s bad habit of selling old computers without erasing sensitive information.

Cut…!: That tour de force of college promotion, LU uncut!, has been removed from the Longwood home page. We knew it would happen one day…but this was too soon. It was only three years old! It had so much potential. It’s all too sudden. We never had time to say goodbye.

Master Plan: If you haven’t seen Vision 2020: The Longwood University Campus Master Plan video, check it out here.

Reminder: We’re now accepting artwork submissions. Photos, sketches, paintings, Paint and iPhone doodles, comic strips, etc. Submissions do not have to pertain to Longwood.

Leave a Comment » | Miscellanea, Money, Music, Oktoberfest, Politics, Professors, Technology | Permalink
Posted by thelongwoodhole

The Road to Oktoberfest, Day Three: A Most Exclusive Club

September 30, 2009

For this third day of Spirit Week, we’re examining a student organization…of sorts. It has no annual fees or t-shirts. It doesn’t have an official name. There’s no Constitution, no banal assurances of acceptance and equal-oportunity membership. Quite the opposite — each week, it’s members are reviewed by the group’s leader, who gleefully expunges one unworthy person from the roster.

They are the Facebook friends of Longwood senior Michael Gills. Here is their newsletter: mike gills

mike 3

(photo credit: facebook.com)

Michael is a writer, a tennis enthusiast, a record-holding Tetris player and, for the time being, our friend on Facebook. He answered some questions from The Longwood Hole about the finer points of winnowing his friend list, and how the Elite 40 originated.

The Longwood Hole: How did the idea of the elite forty come about? What were your influences?

Michael: The idea came from a lot of things, one being the home spam — what do I care if “Emily is soooo sleeepppy”? It’s crazy the things people post that they think we want to read about — when they’re tired, what they ate, how well they did on an exam, etc. It’s just a confession on how boring people’s lives really are. And I would still read it! I found myself clicking on people’s profiles and browsing these meaningless wall posts. I think there’s a real insanity about facebook people aren’t addressing.

TLH: How many people, if any, have realized that they have been removed from your friend list? Did you let them back in? Is ejection permanent?

Michael: I get two or three requests a day, some know they’ve been booted, some think it was just a mistake. I think the latter category is more evidence of that facebook insanity…I mean these people have so many friends they’ve forgotten if I was ever a part of their list. As for reentries, well, don’t hold your breath.

TLH: Who would go first: a kind-hearted acquaintance you barely know, or a total asshole you know intimately?

Michael: The kind-hearted schmuck, no doubt.

TLH: When high noon arrives, do you already have an idea who will be let go? Or do you examine your list carefully, weighing each individual person?

Michael: I often have a person lined up, but last minute acts of redemption are certainly possible. In terms of examining the list carefully, I do the weighing on a completely biased and partial scale. My justice has twelve eyes and x-ray vision.

TLH: How do you feel when you lighten your friend list? Is it cathartic? Addictive?

Michael: I’m a big minimalist, and I seriously enjoy throwing things away. That includes friends. I would call the experience liberating.

TLH: Will it stop at forty, or will the purging continue? A sweet sixteen maybe? Will this continue until there is only one friend left?

Michael: Once I hit 40 I was thinking of letting new friends in — which would mean old friends would have to leave. Taking it down to one might seriously alienate me from people I care about. I mean, could I un-friend my own sister? Stop giving me ideas!

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The Road to Oktoberfest, Day Two: “Darconville’s Cat”

September 29, 2009

(photo credit: New York Times)

We don’t know what Longwood College thought of Alexander Theroux, a Byronic New Englander who taught English classes in the late sixties — but we have a pretty good idea of what Theroux thought of Longwood College.

“Darconville’s Cat” was published in 1981. It quickly became a cult classic, and it established Theroux’s reputation as a premier loquacious nutjob roaming through the institution of maximalist literature.

The plot is timeless: A professor at a women’s college in central Virginia falls in love and becomes romantically involved with one of his students. After about a year, she jilts him. They reconcile. The professor moves to Boston to teach at Harvard, where he gets relationship advice from the Devil, is jilted by his lover, again, and goes bananas.

Luckily, by the time Darconville goes insane and the seven-hundred page novel spirals off into space, Theroux’s already gotten plenty of digs in on Longwood College, renamed Quinsy College. In the first half of the book, when he’s not crying tears of blood over his lover, Theroux is grinding all sorts of axes against the brain-dead southern belles he had to teach and the charlatan English faculty with whom he had to work. No one is spared: he even takes the time to pick apart Hampden-Sydney douches!

Don’t try to figure out who the professors are, because none of them are teaching anymore. There is a rumor that someone — possibly Theroux — created an annotated edition of the novel with the real names inked in. In any case, you can still read chapters of “Darconville’s Cat” and spot Farmville landmarks: The Confederate Soldier on High Street, the bridge going over the Appomattox River, the Baptist church on Main Street.

So for this second day of Spirit Week, we salute “Darconville’s Cat,” and we salute its writer, the caped misfit who’s become a fixture Longwood lore. Alexander Theroux, according to all the stories

1. Wore all black.

2. Drove around town in Rolls Royce with a steering wheel on the right side.

3. Sometimes climbed up a drain pipe to get to his classes on second floor Grainger.

4. Threw wild parties for students at his home on High Street.

5. Stole a shitload of books from the Lancaster Library before he left town.

If you don’t believe us, ask your professors. If they’ve been at Longwood long enough to feel underappreciated, they’ve probably heard of him. They’ve probably read his book, too.

4 Comments | Books, Oktoberfest, Professors | Permalink
Posted by thelongwoodhole

The Road to Oktoberfest, Day One: “Putting Down Clarence”

September 28, 2009

For the beginning of Spirit Week, we’re spotlighting what has quickly become a new student tradition at Longwood: insurance fraud.

At first, we were just looking for stories of laptop destruction. And we did receive some interesting accounts, such as the student who was jamming out to music on the roof of his apartment and, when he climbed into the window and accidentally kicked the power cord, the laptop slid down the roof.

And then there was the amazing tale of a student who was stuck by a vehicle while crossing the road. The laptop in her book bag, totalled from the impact, was credited with saving her life.

The majority of the stories, however, were about destroying Dell laptops to receive the warranty cheese. Kind of illegal, yes, but lisssssten. Longwood Lancers bleed blue and white — not green.

Katharine, a recent graduate, was kind enough to write about her own experience destroying her laptop, and how it changed her life got her a new computer:

Dell has got to make a killing with its contract with Longwood. Even if they weren’t turning a huge profit on the laptop sales, I’m sure they’re in cahoots with the hackers that were always itching to get my credit card number from my PC. In fact, the only truly useful feature of the Longwood Dell is what they call the Complete Care Warranty. With a couple of little white lies to my scholarship committee, I convinced them that the warranty package was a university requirement, and so they paid for it. My new laptop, which I named Clarence, was novel at first but quickly became more trouble than it was worth. After three and a half years of less than stellar service, it was time to take ol’ Clarence out behind the barn and put him out of his misery, if you take “behind the barn” to mean “in the radio station” and “put him out of his misery” to mean “forcefully drop him repeatedly against the floor two weeks before the warranty expired.” It was more therapeutic than anything Student Counseling Services had ever done for me. Since I knew a guy who worked at the Help Desk, I planned my “accident” around his work schedule. It’s like the Mafia: if you know the right people, they don’t ask questions. I took home a loaner, and three days later I had a new-to-me refurbished Dell, which lasted for about a year before it was hacked and I had to drill a hole through the hard drive. As for me, I’m a bona-fide Mac person now, apple sticker on the car and all that jazz. Still, I’m grateful to Dell for giving me my first real experience with insurance fraud, a skill I’m sure to need if the Public Option doesn’t go through. Now that’s what I call discovering the power in me.

Tomorrow we’ll take a look at some of Longwood’s notable alumni and professors.

ALSO: We’ve got the full lineup for Friday’s Battle of the Bands.

someone was listening to it on their roof and kicked the cord climbing in their window

laptop fell of

Leave a Comment » | Money, Oktoberfest, Technology | Permalink
Posted by thelongwoodhole